Researching in the archives of the British photographic company Ilford Limited, I recently came across a curious memo pasted into an experiment book by one of the company’s chemists. Dated January 19 1923, it appears as a small interruption in the page: a practical instruction that “in future, coating of any kind of emulsion must not be commenced or proceeded with during a fog”.
This brief directive was my first clue to a connection between the photographic term “fogging” and the noxious London fogs which, though often associated with the 19th-century city, persisted well into the 1950s.
The memo was attached to a page otherwise dedicated to photographic fog. In chemical photography, “fogging” describes an effect caused by chemical contamination or light leaks during the processing of prints or negatives, producing a mist-like veil across the image.
